Are not able to kill the soul. — Here our Lord uses what we may call the popular dichotomy of man’s nature, and the word “soul” includes all that truly lives and thinks and wills in man, and is therefore equivalent to the “soul and spirit” of the more scientific trichotomy of St. Paul’s Epistles (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
Fear him which is able ... — Few words have given rise to interpretations more strangely contrasted than these. Not a few of the most devout and thoughtful commentators, unwilling to admit that our Lord ever presented the Father to men in the character of a destroyer, have urged that the meaning may be thus paraphrased: “Fear not men; but fear the Spirit of Evil, the great Adversary who, if you yield to his temptations, has power to lead you captive at his will, to destroy alike your outward and your inward life, either in the Gehenna of torture or in that of hatred and remorse.” Plausible as it seems, however, this interpretation is not, it is believed, the true one. (1) We are nowhere taught in Scripture to fear the devil, but rather to resist and defy him (Ephesians 6:11; James 4:7); and (2) it is a sufficient answer to the feeling which has prompted the other explanation to say that we are not told to think of God as in any case willing to destroy, but only as having the power to inflict that destruction where all offers of mercy and all calls to righteousness have been rejected. In addition to this, it must be remembered that St. James uses language almost identical (“There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy,” James 4:12) where there cannot be a shadow of doubt as to the meaning.